More cuts! My goal is to post such cuts once a week. Last week, I missed the cut. Here goes!

 From Andrew Fitzgerald, a day after the horrific tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma:

Oklahoma
City Archbishop Paul Coakley was a guest this morning on The Catholic
Channel on SiriusXM. The Archbishop was in Moore, OK, yesterday
surveying the damage and talking to residents in the aftermath of the
tornado and he talked about the remarkable resiliency of the people he
encountered.

He
described meeting a 94 year old woman who’d had her home destroyed. It
was the second time she had lost her home to a tornado, the last time
being in the devastating 1999 storm.

“She
reached into her pocket and pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills
and she was handing them out to people,” recalled Archbishop Coakley.
“This was a woman who, the day before, had lost her home for the second
time and her response was to give, to share. This was truly the widow
of ‘The Widow’s Might.’ She had nothing and yet she was giving her
all.”

Amazing. Let's continue to keep the people in Moore in our prayers,
along with all people, wherever they are, who are suffering because of
natural disasters.

Its
theme is: “One Lord, One Faith”, which was chosen to testify to the deep
unity that characterizes it. “It will be an event,” Archbishop
Fisichella explained, “occurring for the first time in the history of
the Church, which is why we can describe it as ‘historical’. The
cathedrals of the world will be synchronized with Rome and will, for an
hour, be in communion with the Pope in Eucharistic adoration. There has
been an incredible response to this initiative, going beyond the
cathedrals and involving episcopal conferences, parishes, lay
associations, and religious congregations, especially cloistered ones.”

From
the Cook Islands to Chile, Burkina Faso, Taiwan, Iraq, Bangladesh, the
United States, and the Philippines, the dioceses will be synchronized
with St. Peter’s and will pray for the intentions proposed by the Pope.
The first is: “For the Church spread throughout the world and united
today in the adoration of the Most Holy Eucharist as a sign of unity.
May the Lord make her ever more obedient to hearing his Word in order to
stand before the world ‘ever more beautiful, without stain or blemish,
but holy and blameless.’ That through her faithful announcement, the
Word that saves may still resonate as the bearer of mercy and may
increase love to give full meaning to pain and suffering, giving back
joy and serenity.”

 Congratulations to the great Dr. Ray Dennehy, who will receive, this weekend, the Rupert and Timothy Smith Award for Distinguished Contributions to Pro-Life Scholarship.

When
asked what receiving the Smith award meant to him, Professor Dennehy
told CalCatholic: “For the last 48 semesters I have debated abortion at
UC Berkeleyfor the last 10 years in front of their School of Public
Health, mostly with Malcolm Potts. This year, for the first time, I did
not receive an invitation, so that was kind of disheartening, but then I
heard I was getting the Smith Award. That’s very meaningful. This is an
award given by my peers, by people in the trenches, and that gives it a
special kind of meaning.”

Professor Dennehy also told the story
of a recent email from a former student who had never agreed with the
pro-life position. “But once she got pregnant, and re-read some of my
stuff, she told me that there was no way she could ever have an
abortion. That one email made my whole career worthwhile.”

What is
this God’s plan? It is to make us all the one family of his children, in
which each of you feels close to Him and feels loved by Himfeels, as
in the Gospel parable, the warmth of being the family of God. In this
great design, the Church finds its source. [The Church is] is not an
organization founded by an agreement among [a group of] persons, butas
we were reminded many times by Pope Benedict XVIis the work of God: it
was born out of the plan of love, which realizes itself progressively in
history. The Church is born from the desire of God to call all people
into communion with Him, to His friendship, and indeed, as His children,
to partake of His own divine life. The very word “Church”, from the
Greek ekklesia, means “convocation”.

That paragraph, in fact, is very similiar to one of my favorite passages from the Catechism: paragraph #1.

In the
past ten years, there has been a decrease in people in England and Wales
identifying as Christian, from 71.7 per cent to 59.3 per cent of the
population. In the same period the number of Muslims in England and
Wales has risen from 3 per cent of the population to 4.8 per cent  2.7
million people. And Islam has age on its side. Whereas a half of British
Muslims are under 25, almost a quarter of Christians are approaching
their eighth decade.

 Yesterday, May 29th, was G. K. Chesterton's birth; he was born in
1874. What would he have thought about England becoming Muslim? In 1911,
he wrote: "A good Moslem king was one who was strict in religion,
valiant in
battle, just in giving judgment among his people, but not one who had
the slightest objection in international matters to removing his
neighbour's landmark." (ILN Nov. 4, 1911; see the Chesterton and Friends blog). And, from Orthodoxy: “…but out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come
the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with
scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God
to be alone.”

 Who uttered this (supposedly good humored) cut at Catholics? ""You
just can't trust those damn Catholics on a Thursday or a Friday, and so,
literally, I can say that.” Here's the answer.

 Sometimes a single paragraph jumps off a page, as did this one, from a Financial Times essay, "Mind field", about the newest (and fifth) edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:

Over
recent years there has been an increasing tendency to view the public as
victims of drug-mongering. But millions have been strikingly eager to
believe they and their children are entitled to a life free of anxiety,
grief, rage, confusion, shyness and periods of deep suffering  and more
than ready to accept that they can buy a product to ensure this. It may
be that the pharmaceutical industry has shown us what a capitalist
response to a spiritual problem looks like.

I
started by reading Pope Benedict’s Regensburg address, aware that it had
generated controversy at the time and was some sort of attempt futile,
of course  to reconcile faith and reason. I also read the shortest
book of his I could find, On Conscience. I expected  and wanted  to
find bigotry and illogicality that would vindicate my atheism. Instead, I
was presented with a God who was the Logos: not a supernatural dictator
crushing human reason, but the self-expressing standard of goodness and
objective truth towards which our reason is oriented, and in which it
is fulfilled, an entity that does not robotically control our morality,
but is rather the source of our capacity for moral perception, a
perception that requires development and formation through the
conscientious exercise of free will.

If only we could get many Catholics to read the works of
Ratzinger/Benedict with this same intellectual curiosity and
openmindedness!

 That would include Han Küng, who recently wrote an essay titled, "The paradox of Pope Francis".
As many readers know, Küng has been on a long but consistent journey
away from Catholicism and orthodoxy since the 1970s, and has, at
different times, attacked many key Catholic doctrines (the papacy,
male-only ordination, etc.), as well as making personal attacks on John
Paul II and Benedict XVI. So, what deep theological issues does Küng
take up in writingn about the new pontiff?

It is
astonishing how, from the first minute of his election, Pope Francis
chose a new style: unlike his predecessor, no miter with gold and
jewels, no ermine-trimmed cape, no made-to-measure red shoes and
headwear, no magnificent throne. Astonishing, too, that the new pope
deliberately abstains from solemn gestures and high-flown rhetoric and
speaks in the language of the people.

Ah, so Küng's beefs have been mostly about wardrobe and big words.
That's good to know. I'm sure someone at the Vatican is also filing that
away for future reference.

Renowned
author Dan Brown got out of his luxurious four-poster bed in his
expensive $10 million house and paced the bedroom, using the feet
located at the ends of his two legs to propel him forwards. He knew he
shouldn’t care what a few jealous critics thought. His new book Inferno
was coming out on Tuesday, and the 480-page hardback published by
Doubleday with a recommended US retail price of $29.95 was sure to be a
hit. Wasn’t it?

Well, the infernal tree-destroying, history-revising, logic-mocking, thrill-killing thing is indeed at the top of the New York Times'
bestseller lists. No surprise. Such is the semi-literate age in which
we live. As Dr. Anthony Esolen, who has translanted Dante's Infernofor Modern Library Classics,
wrote in his recent CWR review of Brown's new hack-by-numbers novel, "I
defy anyone to find for me a best-selling novel written in English
before 1950 that is as relentlessly inane and chic-trite and morally
destitute as this one. In saying so, do I also mean to impugn the
tastes of his readers? Let me answer by adapting Dante’s verse over the
gates to the lower world: Lasciate intelligenza, voi ch’entrate." Read the entire review and pass it along to your Brown-believing friends (but don't expect them to remain friends after reading it).


Just so you know that it isn't just narrow-minded religious zealots
like myself who smirk at Brown's tenuous relationship with facts, here
is a piece at The Daily Beast about errors in Inferno. My favorite:

Langdon’s
“body tensed” when he saw a tube marked with a biohazard symbol, as if
it might suddenly explode. Dr. Sienna helpfully tells him “We see these
occasionally in the medical field.” Occasionally? The biohazard symbol
is in every doctor’s office and hospital room, on the garbage bins for
biological material and the boxes for the disposal of used needles.

 No one was audited, nor was anyone's e-mails hacked, in the writing
of this column. Just so you know. There, don't you feel better now?
Good.

 I'm mildly surprised that I haven't been audited. Seriously. Why? Because, as FOX News reported a
week ago, "Internal Revenue Service mishandled tax returns of adoptive
families, flagging for further review 90 percent of those who claimed
the adoption tax credit for the 2012 filing season. And a report by the
federal agency’s Taxpayer Advocate Service also found that nearly 70
percent of adoptive families  more than 35,000  had at least a partial
audit of their tax return. By contrast, just one percent of all returns
are audited." David French writes of this IRS-induced insanity:

So
Congress implemented a tax credit to facilitate adoption  a process
that is so extraordinarily expensive that it is out of reach for many
middle-class families  and the IRS responded by implementing an audit
campaign that delayed much-needed tax refunds to the very families that
needed them the most. Oh, and the return on its investment in this
harassment? Slightly more than 1 percent. This audit wave got almost no
media coverage, but what was the experience like for individual
families? In a word, grueling. Huge document requests with short
turnaround times were followed by lengthy IRS delays in processing, all
with no understanding for the unique documentation challenges of
international adoption.

As French notes, many people who have never been involved in adopting
a child don't realize the amount of endless paperwork, time, money, and
emotional duress is involved. (And then there are those adoptions that,
for different reasons, don't come to fruition; we've gone through two
of those.) Good grief.

 I enjoy both anniversaries and music
trivia. And since this is an edition of "Carl's Cuts", I should note,
before the year is out, that just thirty years ago, Canadian rocker
Bryan Adams had a huge hit song, "Cuts Like a Knife",
that features this inane chorus: "It cuts like a knife/Oh but it feels
so right". Bryan: I've had cuts, physical and emotional, and none of
them ever felt right. Seek help.

 Some popular music, thankfully, deserves positive attention. Which is why, about ten years ago, I wrote an essay for Saint Austin Review titled, "The Incarnational Art of Van Morrison".
It never made it online, so I recently posted it on the Progarchy.com
site that I co-founded last year with historian and music nut, Bradley
Birzer. "Legendary for his difficult personality and his dislike for the
press," I write, "Morrison has often sent confusing signals about his
religious affections. Yet his finest work can rightly be called
incarnational. This is not to say it is strictly 'Christian,' but that
it is rooted in reality (uncommon in much pop and rock music) and seeks
to incarnate spiritual truth and meaning in concrete forms, themes,
images, and narratives."

 Gonzaga University has been having a poor run of it lately when it
comes to stories that dull the school's image. The most recent bad news
is that a music professor, who is a Jesuit priest, is under
investigation for allegedly purchasing child pornography. From the SpokesmanReview:

The
investigation, headed by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and local
office of the FBI, is looking into dozens of online purchases and movie
downloads made by someone using the credit card and mailing address of
the Rev. Gary Uhlenkott, a music professor who was placed on
administrative leave by the university following last month’s raid. No
charges have been filed and Uhlenkott has not been arrested, but
authorities say the investigation is continuing.

 Cutting to the bone: "I rarely read editorials by the New York Times anymore, not because they’re liberal (Michael Kinsley is liberal and worth reading) but because they’re banal."

 A while back I wrote about
the "bravery" of (currently unsigned) NBA player Jason Collins, who
publicly acknowledged that he is homosexual and has been treated like
Superman eversince. I learned later that journalst and CNN "Reliable
Sources" host Howard Kurtz was fired by The Daily Beast because of his
coverage of Collin's un-closeting. What horrible, homophobic deed did
Kurtz dare to pursue? A UPI report says,
"Kurtz incorrectly accused Collins of leaving out the fact that he was
at one point engaged to former girlfriend Carolyn Moos." Warren Cole
Smith observes:

In fact,
disclosure of the engagement got a short mention in Collins’ article.
Kurtz later apologized for the error, but stood by his original point:
That Collins may have been, to use the politically correct vernacular,
“true to himself,” but he had been and continues to be deceitful toward
others. But The Daily Beast’s Tina Brown, proudly progressive in her
public demeanor, used the minor error as an excuse to can Kurtz, who now
awaits the verdict of CNN, where his contract will soon be up for
renewal.

Kurtz's mistake, it seems to me, is that he was working for The Daily
Beast, not the IRS. If the latter, he simply could have pleaded the Fifth
and been on his merry way.

 Of the love that dares not utter its name, but seems to be
everywhere, all of the time, 24/7, in your face and on the news, the Daily Mailreports
that Prime Minister David Cameron believes that "gay marriage" will
make for stronger families and long-lasting relationships. The only
problem, of course, is that the evidence says otherwise:

Look at
what has happened in those countries that have already made same-sex
marriage legal. In not one case has there been any indication of a wider
revival in marriage. Indeed, in most countries its decline has merely
accelerated.
In Scandinavia, where hostility to the two-parent family
is central to the ruling political orthodoxy, the widening of the legal
definition of marriage has done nothing to stop the institution
decaying.

And so forth and so on.

 On a related note, Carson Holloway makes a point, in this Public Discourse essay, about the recent Boy Scouts decision that is as simple as it is true:

Whatever
else one thinks about the new policy, this much is certain: It can’t
last. No doubt many of the delegates thought they would be buying peace
and quiet by enacting this compromise, but they are bound to be
disappointed. The compromise policy’s short life is predictable, in the
first place, in light of the kind of people it is meant to placate,
people that the Scout delegates have seriously misjudged. Socially
liberal political activists don’t believe in compromise. They believe in
winning.

The proof, as if it is necessary, is seen in the push for "gay
marriage". Thirty years ago, homosexuality was to be merely tolerated.
Then it was to be cleansed of any negative connotations. Then it was to
be celebrated. At this rate, it will be illegal for a man and woman to
marry one another in 20 years.

 There is a new Templeton Report out, titled, "The World's Muslims on Democracy, Religious Freedom, and Sharia".
An introductory page states, "New research, exploring the social and
political attitudes of Muslims around the globe, has revealed that most
adherents of the world's second largest faith have a nuanced attitude
towards the role that sharia law should play in their countries. In most
countries surveyed, a majority of Muslims want shariathe legal system
and moral code of Islamto be the official law of the land. But the
research also implies that most Muslims also want freedom of religion
for people of other faiths." The study (PDF) is over 200 pages long, and I've not read it yet. Here is a bit from the section on "Suicide Bombing":

Muslims
in some countries surveyed in South Asia and the Middle East-North
Africa region are more likely than Muslims elsewhere to consider suicide
bombing justified. Four-in-ten Palestinian Muslims see suicide bombing
as often or sometimes justified, while roughly half (49%) take the
opposite view. In Egypt, about three-in-ten (29%) consider suicide
bombing justified at least sometimes. Elsewhere in the region, fewer
Muslims believe such violence is often or sometimes justified, including
fewer than one-in-five in Jordan (15%) and about one-in-ten in Tunisia
(12%), Morocco (9%) and Iraq (7%).

In the
wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and the Woolwich murder, it was good
to hear expressions of horror and sympathy from Islamic spokesmen, but
something more is desperately required: genuine recognition of the
problem with Islam.

Muslim leaders should ask themselves what
exactly their relationship is to a political movement that encourages
young men to kill and maim on religious grounds. Think of the Tsarnaev
brothers and the way they justified the mayhem they caused in Boston.
Ponder carefully the words last week of Michael Adebolajo, his hands
splashed with blood: "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop
fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are
dying every day."

Of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims
are not terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists. Equating all Muslims
with terrorism is stupid and wrong. But acknowledging that there is a
link between Islam and terror is appropriate and necessary.

 The wonderful Joseph Pearce was recently interviewed on Relevant Radio about his new book, Shakespeare on Love. The show is archived and can be heard here..

 Here was the scene in Eugene, Oregon (where I live) about three
weeks ago: hundreds of people flocking to hear a message of peace and
compassion from a celibate man dressed in robes, a man reverantly called
"His Holiness" and supposedly having a direct connection to the divine.
Yeah, the Pope was in town! No, actually, he wasn't. But the Dalai Lama was, and folks here couldn't get enough of him:

The
Dalai Lama regaled the 11,000 who packed the University of Oregon’s
Matthew Knight Arena on Friday with stories about when he was a child in
Tibet, about how he believes women are biologically more sensitive and
inclined to compassion, and how the next Dalai Lama might even be
female.

A pregnant woman interviewed for the local news story said, "It was
really positive hearing about having compassion and affection for my
child-to-be..." So, it was somehow revelatory and unique to hear
positive words about an unborn child? Is that how bad things have become
in the enlightened West? Apparently so. I haven't found a text of the Dalai Lama's speech, but apparently it was about that most controversial
topic: peace:

He spent
an hour shoulder-to-shoulder with a massive audience who cheered nearly
every mention of peace. “By speaking out like he does, I believe we can
reach peace by the end of this century,” Carrigan said. “My daughter’s
generation are going to see the fruits of the labors we are undertaking
now.”

Dare I say that the Dalai Lama, in speaking out about peace, appears
to be more courageous than Mr. Collins in announcing his homosexuality!
More seriously, talk of reaching peace by the end of this century
reveals a remarkably facile grasp of both human nature and current
events. Mr. Carrigan might want to spend some time talking to some of
those suicide-bomb-supporting Muslims in Palestine before gets too
carried away. As for getting carried away, the local left-wing rag, The Eugene Weekly,couldn't contain itself:

So as he
postpones nirvana and as part of his mission to promote values and
ethics in the interest of human happiness, encourage harmony between
religions and foster the welfare of the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama
is making his first-ever trip to Eugene. We get a lot of famous people
coming through this town, but not usually of the “manifestation of the
bodhisattva of compassion” variety...

For some reason, I cannot imagine the Pope, who makes far more modest
claims about his relation to the divine, getting such positive
treatment. If only the Pope would talk about peace and compassion,
right?

 Roy Schoeman, convert from Judaism and outstanding author, has a new radio program:

I
just wanted to let you know, in case it is of interest (and also to ask
for prayers), that this Saturday  May 18  I will be beginning a new
project, a weekly live radio call-in show called “Salvation is from the
Jews”, that will be broadcast live on Radio Maria. Radio Maria is a
worldwide Catholic network that goes out both on local AM and FM
stations, and the internet. The list of stations, and a listen-live
link to listen over the internet, can be found on their website:
radiomaria.us. Your prayers for the show, and/or tuning in or calling
in, are very, very welcome! The purpose of the show is to discuss the
role of Judaism in salvation history, the many ways that the Catholic
Church is the continuation of Judaism after the coming of the Messiah
(i.e. “post-Messianic Judaism”), the joy of entering the Church, and the
role of the conversion of the Jews in bringing about the Second
Coming. A number of Jewish entrants into the Church will join me on
the show to share their stories and perspectives.


About twenty years ago (I find myself using that phrase often now, as I
hit my mid-forties), I discovered a wonderful little bookstore, Windows Booksellers,.
Then located on the edge of the University of Oregon campus, it is
owned and operated by the members of a small Evangelical house group,
Church of the Servant King (see this 2005 article for
some background). It was there that I bought some of my first works of
Catholic apologetics and theology, including Henri de Lubac's Catholicism, Karl Adams' The Spirit of Catholicism, Thomas Howard's Evangelical Is Not Enough, and Ronald Knox's The Belief of Catholics. Since then, the bookstore has moved twice, to ever bigger locations; and, since then, I've bought hundreds of books there.

Early
on, during one of my frequent visits, I met Brian Logan, who wore
various hats, including being a leader in the house church and running
the exceptional coffee shop, Theo's, which
is above the bookstore. Over the years, Brian and I had many
conversations, some of them short and in passing (usually as he made
espresso) and others longer and more involved, and almost always about
theology and or music (we both love jazz). He would often ask me what I
was reading, and in recent months we talked about von Balthasar, who he
had recently started to read. Earlier this month, I received a stunning
phone call: Brian, who was just 52 years old and the father of two young
children, had died the day before of a heart attack. I had seen him a
few days earlier, when I had stopped in to get an americano. It had been
a frustrating week, and when Brian asked me how I was doing, I joked,
"I need some answers to this crazy question called life!" He laughed and
said, "You and I both know Who has the answers." It was a small thing,
the sort of banter you have with someone who has been there for years.

Carl E. Olson is editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight.

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